A decade of submissions

A bonus post recapping what I've learned over the past 10 years.

My friend and fellow Latine writer, Renan Bernardo, wrote a post detailing his experience submitting fiction to the English-speaking market over the past 10 years, which, if you’re a writer, I highly encourage you to read. Since I’m also entering my tenth year, I felt inspired to do a similar recap. So here it is.

First, a little background. I’ve mentioned before that I decided I was meant to be a fiction writer at the ripe old age of 5. Since I wouldn’t even be taught to read and write for another year, that was pretty ambitious thinking, but I loved stories, and knew that was what I was meant to do. So as a kid I wrote the cute little stories kids tend to write, sometimes with the help of an adult who would write them down for me until I was old enough to do it myself. I shared one of these early efforts, my first SF story, with subscribers a while back.

I wouldn’t really get serious about the craft until my teens though, where in addition to my required homework I would write several early novels (all of them since trunked because they were just NOT good). I also used this time to learn from other authors, both by reading a lot of fiction, and also writing craft books. I didn’t know any other writers at the time, so I had to learn all this on my own.

Things changed for me somewhat when I attended the Odyssey workshop in 2002. By this point I’d been published, but my publications were all non-fiction. A trend that would continue until 2016. Odyssey was great for me in that I learned a lot that I otherwise wouldn’t have, or that would’ve taken me a lot longer to learn. But after that, I suffered a bit of burnout.

I was in college at the time, studying journalism. My focus was on that. Then I got a job out of college as an editor, moved to a new city, got married, had twins followed by my son, dealt with postpartum depression and anxiety, and started a home daycare so we wouldn’t lose our house (which at the time was a possibility). With all that going on, I essentially stopped writing fiction for nearly a decade.

But when my son started school, I shut down the daycare (our financial situation had improved at this point), and I finally started getting back into writing. My first attempt was a little children’s story about a missing stuffed animal. I didn’t really attempt to get it published, but the people who read it, loved it, and that gave me the confidence to write a few more things.

The next thing I wrote was a horror story called, “The Monsters We Create.” I sent it out on submission to a small, token-paying anthology, and sold it right away. This again felt great. I made laughable money on it, but I had an actual piece of fiction out in the world. That story sold on its first submission back in December of 2015. It was published the following year. I wasn’t naive enough to think it would always be that easy to sell a story though.

Fun Fact: I just re-sold this story after retiring it for a few years to an anthology by Graveside Press. It’s a nice full-circle moment that it’ll be out in the world again after all this time.

Back then, I was still just getting my feet wet, so I wasn’t writing nearly as much as I do now. Consequently, my next sale was to the same indie publisher, this time for a cyberpunk novelette called, “One Last Payday.” I made slightly more money off this story, but not by much. Then I sold it again to an indie anthology for standard reprint rates, which was a bit nicer. To date, it’s actually one of my most reprinted stories, though few people have read it since it’s never been free-to-read anywhere.

I didn’t make my first pro-paying publication though until I sold a post-apocalyptic story called, “Vinyl Wisdom,” to the anthology, A Punk Rock Future. This was published in 2018 and is still one of my favorite stories I’ve written.

These first three stories all sold on their first submission, but again, I knew better than to think it would always be this easy.

At this point I’d had one publication per year and in 2019 I’d made enough sales to join SFWA. In 2020, I upped my publications to 3. In 2021, that became 4. Then in 2022 there was a big jump to 9, and I also published my novella Lost Cargo. 2023 went out with 15 publications, including my first time in a “Best of the year” anthology when “Into the Frozen Wilds” was published in Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol. 1.

Last year had slightly fewer publications, at 13, but it was arguably my most successful year. I saw my first fiction translations for my stories, “The Body Remembers” and “Decorative.” For the first time ever, I had a story make both the Nebula and Stoker reading lists (“The Body Remembers”). I made the BSFA long-list for the first time for my story, “Things Most Meaningful.” And I became a finalist for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora awards for my story, “Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont,” which also landed in two “Best of” anthologies, Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol. 2, and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024. I also sold a book, my novelette, Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl, to Stars and Sabers Publishing.

I mentioned my earliest submissions had all sold on their first time out, and while that helped boost my confidence enough to keep going, I knew it wouldn’t always be that easy. I like to keep track of these things, so I can tell you my current record for most submissions before a sale is 40. There are some stories I’ve “trunked” at fewer submissions than that. I rarely trunk stories permanently though. I believe that a story might not sell immediately because I might just not have found the right market for it yet. Or else, it might just need a little reworking, which I can usually tell. If I put something out of rotation permanently, it tends to be because I feel it no longer reflects the quality of my writing, or else there’s some major flaw with it that simple editing can’t fix.

I’ve also come to understand my own voice better over the years. I know I essentially write two kinds of stories. Some are the serious ones that are maybe more complex and have a lot to say. Others are just fun little romps that are never going to get major reviews or awards, but that I just enjoy putting out there. Both are valid.

Renan bravely shared his submission stats, so I’ll do the same. Shoutout to The Submission Grinder for making that sort of thing easy to check. As of this writing, I’ve added 101 stories to the Grinder. I’ve sent out 1090 submissions. 897 of those have resulted in rejections, both personal and not-so-much. 63 have been accepted. 26 are pending.

I share all these numbers because it really is a numbers game. I get a decent number of publications each year, but I also have a lot of things doing the submission rounds at all times, on average around 30, so the current 26 is low for me. People always ask, how do you handle the rejections? The fact is, with that many stories on sub, I hardly think about them. A rejection comes in, and if I can, I immediately send the story out again. If no suitable market is open, I make sure I send it out as soon as I can.

Sure, I’ve had my share of crushing rejections I’ve had high hopes for, only to receive a form, or be told it was a near miss. It happens. But I’ve always been fairly thick-skinned about these things, so I tend to recover quickly. And I know that as long as I believe in my story, it’ll eventually find an editor that does too. So far, that’s worked out for me.

Similarly, acceptances by big publications—and even major award nominations—don’t guarantee you’ll get more acceptances. Of course, that can help get your work noticed and hopefully read more, but all those writers you admire and wish you could write like, they’re still getting rejections too. Sometimes multiple in a day. They just don’t let that stop them.

So you might wonder, after a decade of doing this, does it get easier? Renan addresses that question too, and he had challenges I didn’t have to face. It’s a personal thing that’s different for everyone. But from my experience, some things do get easier. I understand how this business works a lot better than I did back in 2015 when I was just figuring out how to read a contract, or what reasonable pay might be, or that reader accessibility is also important. Some things have gotten harder though, in the sense that you’re always in competition with your past self. Every success is also an invitation to push your craft even further. To prove to yourself there’s more to mine there. And a drive to see what stories are yet to come, that “present you” can’t even imagine yet.

What I’ve learned is that you never stop learning. Every story comes with it’s own set of challenges. Every story teaches you about who you are and what you have to say, plus new ways to say it. Even the little fun ones that don’t seem that deep on a first read. I’ve learned what kinds of things matter to me, and set different goals than I might’ve set in the beginning of my career. I’ve learned that perseverance and believing in your work is essential. Because if you don’t believe in yourself, how can you expect others to?

I’ve also learned how important community is, and how important it is to give back to it. Whatever your level of success in this business, none of us get there in a vacuum. I started my journey largely on my own, but since then hundreds of people have crossed my path who’ve helped me learn the ropes and up my game. I try to do the same for others. Community also helps you navigate the lows and celebrate the highs. It’s part of what makes doing what we do, worthwhile, because it’s a tough gig. A story will often come out, get a few reads, and then vanish as suddenly as it arrived on the scene. These are fleeting moments of joy, and you have to take the time to soak them in.

Renan summarizes what he’s learned as writing consistently, reading consistently, submitting consistently, honing your craft, and getting involved (he goes into more detail). I agree 100% with all that. The people you see still doing this year after year—the names you begin to recognize—they’re the people doing those five things. I don’t generally like to give advice to newer writers because not everything works for everyone, but I would say some form of those five things will never lead you astray.

I hope you’ve found this recap helpful, especially if you’re just starting out.

I’ll end this by reminding awards readers that Nebula and BSFA voting ends this Friday. I’d appreciate it if you gave some of my work a shot. You can find my eligibility with links and descriptions here.

Thanks for reading, and if monthly updates on what I’m doing in this field interest you, my newsletter comes out the first of each month. It’s free for everyone and in addition to updates includes a look behind-the-scenes of one of my published stories. Subscribers also get occasional perks others don’t.

P.A. Cornell